"WHILE MANY STUDENTS head directly to college after graduating from high school, a smaller cohort chooses another alternative: a gap year.
‘I would hazard to say that there is at least as much educational value in an international or domestic gap year experience as there is in a freshman year of college,’ says Ethan Knight, executive director and founder of the Oregon-based nonprofit Gap Year Association.
A gap year, as Knight’s organization defines it, refers to ‘a semester or year of experiential learning, typically taken after high school and prior to career or postsecondary education, in order to deepen one’s practical, professional and personal awareness.’"…